Chop Shop dance festival celebrates 5th year

A lot can change in five years. For Eva Stone, producer of the Bellevue-based dance festival, Chop Shop: Bodies of Work, that couldn’t be more true.

From a thrown-together dance performance in 2008, where she had to choreograph a chunk of the festival’s eight dances, to 2012, where she now has to turn down dancers from Germany and Brazil, Chop Shop is all grown up.

The two-day dance festival includes performances by regional, national, and international dancers and dance companies. Chop Shop continues to make a name for itself in the northwest and beyond, converting modern dance newbies into patrons of the often obscure performing art.

“I’ve had someone ask for their money back just once,” Stone said. “And that’s because the piece was about divorce.”

Aside from that, most people walk out of the Theatre at Meydenbauer Center in awe, she said.

This is not “interpretive dance” – a common misconception.

Many dancers gain a solid foundation in ballet before shedding their slippers in favor of modern dance’s bare feet.

Here, instead of portraying tutu-clad princesses, they use human emotions as inspiration. Instead of trying to defy gravity up on the tips of their toes, modern dancers succumb to gravity, falling, rolling on the floor, in addition to leaping through the air.

In fact, it may be helpful in keeping an open mind to think about it as just “dance” as opposed to “modern dance,” said Scott Lewis, Executive Director of Chop Shop participant Northwest Dance Project.

It may also be helpful to remember that there are no wrong answers when watching modern dance, he said. While the choreographer may have had an inspiration or story in mind when creating a work, the audience member is supposed to come up with their own meaning.

“My mother will watch a dance piece and come up to the choreographer afterward and say, ‘I get it!’ and she’s dead wrong. But it’s OK, because even if it’s not where the choreographer was coming from, her opinion is equally as valid,” Lewis said.

He encourages people to remember this concept when watching Northwest Dance Project’s “A Short History of Walking” in Chop Shop. Two bare-chested dancers in a darkly-lit stage will make shapes with their hands and bodies, alternating their speeds with an almost martial-arts like quality.

Lewis’ company, in addition to BodyVox, represent Chop Shop’s expansion to dance outside of the Seattle Area (Portland, Ore., in this case). Stone has also brought in Move: the company from Vancouver, British Columbia and New York-based Adam Barruch, who remembers once auditioning for the legendary Pina Bausch, the topic of a 3D feature film now in theaters.

High-caliber artists, as well as polished pieces, are what set Chop Shop apart from other northwest dance festivals, where works are sometimes still in progress, said Ellie Sandstrom, a Seattle-based dancer who performed in the very first Chop Shop.

This year, Sandstrom will show off her sharp, animalistic movements yet again in the two identical performances that make up the Chop Shop festival – an evening show Feb. 11 and a matinee Feb. 12.

Afterward, attendees will be treated to cake to commemorate the 26 companies and 144 dancers who have graced the Chop Shop stage since 2008.

It’s a monumental event for Stone, who has singlehandedly recruited each and every one of them to the Eastside’s only dance festival.

“I promised my audience cake last year and now I’m going to deliver,” she said.

If you go:

Chop Shop is at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 11 and 3 p.m., Feb. 12 at the Theatre at Meydenbauer Center, 11100 NE Sixth St., Bellevue. For tickets and more information, go to http://www.chopshopdance.org/.